He walked through the door and saw that it was quite crowded.  But then he saw a small table in the corner as the couple that had been sitting there got up to leave, pulling on their coats.  JD hurried through the crowded coffee shop and dropped into one of the seats, his back against the wall so he could watch the whole shop. 

“Chto ya mogu dlya vas poluchit’?” a pretty, brunette woman said as she hovered over him.  She was young, he thought, perhaps twenty or twenty-one.  She was dressed casually in jeans and a long-sleeve shirt with an American football team’s logo.

“I don’t speak Russian,” he said, looking at her.  Then he noticed her nametag.  He couldn’t read her name, but he assumed she worked there.  “Large coffee?” he said, hoping she’d understand.  “Grande?” he added, hoping she spoke “Starbucks.”

“Da” she said and walked away. 

A few minutes later she came back and gently placed the coffee in front of him and smiled.  She said something else, but he couldn’t understand.

“Shest’sot pyat’desyat rubley, pozhaluysta,” she repeated. 

She must be asking to be paid.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of Russian currency.  He took a guess and pulled out a thousand ruble note and held it up to her. 

“Good?” he said, watching to see her reaction. 

“ya tebe sdachu?” she replied, smiling. 

He guessed that she was asking if he wanted change.  “No change…  Nyet?” he said, unsure of himself. 

That earned him a broad smile.  “Blagodaryu vas!” she replied before turning and heading back to the counter. 

Satisfied that he’d made it through the transaction, he pulled out his phone, set it on the table in front of him, and began to check his email.  He glanced up every once in a while, to see if there was anyone new in the crowd. 

As he sipped his coffee and scrolled through his emails, mostly spam and junk he quickly deleted, he looked up and saw an attractive, young blonde woman walking from the counter toward him.  She locked her eyes on him and approached directly.  When she was directly opposite him, she glanced down at the chair.

“May I join you?” she said to him in Russian accented English. 

“Please,” he replied as he rose and moved around to get her chair for her. 

“Such a gentleman.  Thank you,” she said.  “I guess you aren’t waiting for someone?” she asked. 

A pained expression crossed his face and he replied that he wasn’t.

“How did you know I spoke English?” he asked her after a moment.

“Your phone… and the waitress over there was talking to the Barista about the American that tipped her three-hundred fifty rubles on his six-hundred fifty-ruble bill.  That kind of tipped me off, too,” she said, smiling. 

“You speak English well.  Are you studying here at the university?”

“Thank you.  I do study here, but I learned English from watching General Hospital.”  Her smile crept back out.  “So, what is an American doing in St. Petersburg, Russia in January?”

“Trying to find an old friend,” he replied. 

Her phone rang.  She looked at it for a second and then apologized to JD before accepting the call.  She spoke quickly in Russian to the caller, then set her phone down on the table.

“She must be a pretty important friend,” she said.  “Oh, my manners, my name is Katerina.  You can call me Kat.”

“Please, call me JD.  And how did you know my friend was a woman?”

“I don’t see a guy like you flying halfway around the world looking for a buddy.  So… just a hunch.  Besides, I’m a romantic.  Tell me about her.  Maybe I know her and can help.”

“Her name is Christina… Christi.  I’ve been in love with her since the moment we met.  She disappeared a couple of years ago, after my parent’s funeral.  I haven’t seen her since.  That was almost two years ago.  One of my friends ran across something that said she was at university here.  I just had to come and see if I could find her.”

“Wow, JD.  You must really love this Christi.”  She leaned toward him a little bit, “She’d be stupid not to run back to you if given the chance.” 

“I don’t know if she met someone, or if something happened to her… I just don’t know.  Honestly, I’m having trouble moving on.  I know that I need to… but I just had to try one more time.  You probably think it’s stupid.”

“Not at all.  I’m a romantic.  If I could say anything to her, I would tell her she needs to let herself be found.  You are a rare man, JD.”  She held his eyes with hers.  “How long will you be here, might I ask?”

“I leave in the afternoon, tomorrow.  I am taking the train to Moscow.”

“Your friend doesn’t realize how lucky she is.” Kat said. 

JD finished his coffee and set the cup down.  Kat was smiling at him… like she knew something but wouldn’t tell.  But then that expression was gone… softened into something else. 

“Kat, it has been wonderful talking with you.  Maybe I’ll see you around,” he said as he rose and slipped his coat back on. 

Katerina rose and grabbed him in a tight hug. 

“It was wonderful meeting you, JD.  I hope to see you again, my friend,” kissing him on the cheek.

He snaked his way through the tight tables of the café and through the door onto the street. 

***

“She is just impulsive!” Christi said out loud with frustration.  After a few minutes she picked up the phone and called Kat.  She was her best friend, but she didn’t need her meddling in her love life… especially with Jason.  She felt like the best she could hope for was to hold the fond memories of the past. 

“Kat, what do you think you are doing?  Do you think you are going to just walk across campus and find him?  You’re crazy,” she said to her friend in rapid fire Russian as soon as she picked up the phone. 

“I’m sitting at the coffee shop, three blocks away, and he’s sitting across the table from me,” Kat replied to her in Russian, over the phone. 

“Bullshit,” Christi hit back in English.  Oddly, that was Kat’s favorite word.

“Get Olga, next door, to watch her and get your butt over here.  He is gorgeous and you’re the crazy one if you don’t,” was Kat’s reply, in Russian. 

Then Christi heard Kat put the phone on speaker and set it on the table while she started talking with Jason.  Christi muted her phone so that she wouldn’t blow her cover. 

She listened to him talk and her heart raced.  Just hearing his voice.  She could hear the pain and longing.  She never thought it could still be there… and be so strong.  She grabbed her phone and took it with her into her bedroom.  She threw her clothes off and tried to find something to wear.  Then she ran into the bathroom… she couldn’t do much with her hair, but she touched up her make-up. 

Rushing back into the living room, she went to the door and hurried across the hall to Olga’s.   

Christi grabbed her coat and as she ran down the stairs, she pulled it on and buttoned it up.  She was still listening to him talk as she exited her building and turned down the sidewalk.  It was only a few blocks to the coffee shop.  Maybe five more minutes. 

“Oh God, Jason, don’t leave,” she said to her phone, not even thinking about whether it was muted or not. 

One block.

Crap, he’s leaving, she thought to herself. 

“Christi, where are you?” Kat said into the phone. 

Christi started talking, but then realized she had muted her phone.  “I’m just around the corner,” she said.

“He just walked out the door.  Did he go your way?”

“I don’t see him.” 

“Then keep going, I’ll be right behind you.,” Kat said, moving toward the door.  She saw Christi swoop by a moment before she opened it. 

Kat turned and caught her friend.  She looked ahead, trying to see if she could spot JD’s coat, but his black coat and hat blended it with the dozens of others on the street. 

Christi stopped and turned to Kat.  “How could I have been so stupid?” she said. 

“We can find him, Christi.  I know we can,” Kat said, hugging her friend as she started to cry. 

“It’s no use, Kat.  He’s gone.” 

“No, he isn’t.  Not yet.  Walk with me,” Kat said as she took Christi’s hand and walked with her down the street, hoping to see him entering a hotel or in case he stopped off somewhere. 

She looked at the floor.  “It was complicated.  It still is terribly complicated, but I couldn’t take it anymore.  Can you forgive me?  I love you, Jason.  I love you more than anything in this world except one thing, and…  And I didn’t realize how much I truly loved you until…”

“I just don’t understand.  I need to think.  I need to think about you,” he said as he quickly stood.  He pointed at her, “but right now, I need to figure out how I feel about you.”

JD got up and stormed toward the garage.  A moment later, Christi heard the Camaro start up and the garage door open.  As the garage door closed again, she heard the car screaming down the street. 

She opened her phone up again and dialed a number.

JD drove aimlessly or a while, heading across Buford Dam and then making his way around the southern part of the lake.  He needed to cool off and to think.  After about twenty minutes, he noticed that the same black BMW had been behind him for at least half that time, even when he’d ducked into a neighborhood to look at the lake house his parents had sold just before he joined the Army. 

Back on Brown’s Bridge Rd, he punched the throttle and pushed the car through the gears.  As the speedometer crossed over a hundred miles per hour, he noticed the Beemer was still back there… further… but seemingly pacing him. 

“Let’s see what you’ve got,” he said to his car, dropping back to fourth gear and punching the throttle.  The deep roar turned into a banshee scream as the RPMs skyrocketed.  A few moments later he shifted back into fifth and the car pegged its 145mph speedometer.  It was still accelerating.  The BMW was still in the mirror.

Cresting a small rise just before the Bridge for which Brown’s Bridge Rd was named, he came across a couple of cars in front of him.  He quickly crossed into the other lane, blinking by them and pulling away.  Hopefully, that would slow down whomever was in the BMW trailing him.  He expected the BMW to catch the cars just as the got to the bridge.

Twenty minutes later he was back in Suwanee, five minutes from home, and pulling into Wayne Stewart’s driveway.  They’d been best friends since kindergarten, and now that he’d cooled off, Wayne was just the person he needed to talk with. 

“Damn, Dude,” he said as he walked out his front door, “Christi wasn’t kidding.  Your Camaro is looking amazing.  Kinda ticked I had to find out you were coming back into town from your what… girlfriend?  Hell, I don’t know what she is anymore.  How ya doin’, Brutha?”

“Wayne, it is good to see you,” JD said as he gave his friend a guy hug.  “Can we talk for a few minutes?”

“Yeah, come on in.  I’ll grab us a coupla beers and we can sit on the back deck.  You alright?”

The two men strolled through the kitchen and then headed out to the back deck and dropped into a couple of chairs under the umbrella.  They tapped bottles and each took a long pull from their bottle. 

“Christi called a little while ago.  She was worried.  Said you guys had a fight.  What happened?  I half expected that you’d be married by the end of the week,” Wayne said, cracking a smile. 

“Me, too,” he replied, looking down. 

“Where’s she been for the last eight years?” “I don’t know… and that’s the problem.  She won’t say a word, man.  Hell, she could tell me she was married, and I could deal with it.  But she won’t say anything.”

After riding the underground tram, he got to the top of the escalator heading toward baggage and ticketing.  He flashed back to that moment almost eleven years ago when his parents had dropped their eighteen-year-old son off at this airport for him to go to basic training.  He saw it all in his mind’s eye, then it was gone.

And then he thought of when “she” dropped him off in almost the exact same spot two and a half years later when he had to return to duty after burying his parents. 

Was that really over eight years ago?  It felt like forever, and like it was just yesterday, he thought to himself.

Christi. 

He’d thought he wanted to marry her then.  He’d asked.  She’d told him “not yet.”  That was the last time he saw her.  Eight years, eight months, nineteen days.  Her long, auburn hair waved in the breeze.  Her bright green eyes glinted, like she knew a joke nobody else was in on.  She was one of the most beautiful girls he’d ever seen.  Tall, slender and the way she wrinkled her nose when she laughed.  He thought again about her eyes.  They danced when she looked at him and made his heart race.  She had been “the one” he’d thought, when he was under her spell.

But she disappeared after that. 

He’d been back home several times.  She was gone.  Her family was gone.  None of his friends knew anything.  None of her friends knew anything.  It was like she never existed.  He’d even gone to Russia to search for her.  Christina Tatyna Nova. 

The crowd jostled around him as he slowed to a crawl, lost in the past. A man bumped into him, shocking him back into the present.  He turned and looked for carousel E.  He quickly spotted it, then he saw his luggage coming around. 

JD moved up to grab his bags, two big duffles.  He carried them away from the crush of passengers looking for their own bags, hoisted one to his shoulder and carried the other with his left hand.

“I should have shipped at least one of these,” he said out loud, although really just for his own benefit. 

“Need help, soldier?” he heard over his shoulder. 

JD froze, then slowly turned to face the familiar voice, flooded with equal parts of excitement, hope and dread. 

Words stuck in his throat as he looked down into her bright green eyes. 

“Christi.”

“Jason,” she said.  She was one of only three people that ever called him Jason.  His mother was gone.  The others were Christi and Ellen.  Everyone else called him JD.

Before he could react, her arms were draped around him, one wrapped behind his neck, and the other pulling him closer to her, wrapped around his back.  As he looked into her eyes, he could feel her spell take hold. 

“Where…” he began to stammer, but she shushed him and silenced him with a soft, passionate kiss.

“I’ve missed you, Jason” she said breathlessly as their lips parted. 

“Nobody knew I was coming home today.  How did you know I was here?  And what happened?  You disappeared.  I looked for you,” he said quietly, while examining her lips with his eyes.

“We’ll have time for all that later.  For now, let’s get you home.  And then we can get a nice dinner and talk.  Ok?”

Despite her slender build, she easily swung a duffle bag up to her shoulder.  She’d always surprised him with her strength.  She didn’t look like a woman that could swing a fifty-pound pack onto her back and walk away like it was nothing, but that was just what she was doing. 

“Are you coming?” she said as she turned and smiled at him over her shoulder.

He jogged a few steps to catch up with her as she deftly moved through the crowd and out the doors leading to the pickup area.  It was a cool, reasonably dry day in Atlanta, being mid-October, not the usual hot and humid return he’d experienced. 

He was right behind her as she dropped the bag at the back of a black, stretch Lincoln Town Car.  The driver had hurried around and was loading the first bag into the trunk. 

“Please, Sergeant Ross, let me get that,” he said as he pulled the bag off JD’s shoulder and easily deposited it into the trunk next to the other one.  Then, before JD could think about it, the driver was holding the door for Christi to climb into the back of the stretch limo as he followed. 

“Wow.  Quite the show,” he said to her with a smile.  “But I still don’t know how you knew when I would be here.  And where have you been?” he said as she slipped closer on the seat. 

Before he could push her for the answers to those, and many other questions he had for her, she quieted him with finger on his lips, followed by a kiss.  And another.  And another. 

There were muted cheers from the assembled crowd.  Some crowds had been bigger, some smaller.  He looked around at the two hundred or so people gathered on the street below.  He saw the signs with his name on them, waving in the crowd. 

Someone shouted, “We love you, Ted!”

“It’s been quite a run, hasn’t it?  Feels like I’ve been to every city in this great country over the last few months… but it’s good to be back here.  Home.”  He paused a moment to let the crowd calm down again.  “I might have represented Oregon in the Senate, but I’ve lived and worked here in Washington for most of the last forty years.  I’ve walked these streets and enjoyed these restaurants.  I’ve waved to you and you’ve waved to me.  This is my center.  It’s where I belong.”

Several blocks away, a man wearing an elevator service company uniform carried a tool bag into a building.  He stepped onto the elevator, slipping on a pair of black latex gloves and punching the button for the top floor.  As he exited the elevator, he reached into his pocket and took out a key and turned the switch to remove the elevator from service.  He quickly climbed the stairs to the roof and dropped a single casing in the northwest corner of the building, right next to the parapet.  He slipped back down the stairs and found the office he needed.  He unlocked the door and pushed it open. stepping into an empty waiting room. 

Barris was waiting again for the cheers to die down.  He was tied in the polls with the current president, and even their internal polls were up in the air.  The crowd was chanting “Barris-Hayes, for the best of days” as the Senator looked on, smiling.  Ted Barris loved being on the campaign trail.   

“With your help, we can return our country to the greatness it once promised, not just for the rich, but for everybody.  We can reduce the deficit by making the wealthy pay their fair share,” Senator Barris said as the crowd cheered.

Elevator Man went to the office in the northwest corner of the building and carefully set down his bag and opened the window.  He unzipped the bag and pulled out a hard case.  He popped the latches and flipped the top back.  He quickly and efficiently assembled his M2010 enhanced sniper rifle.  It was the picture of a scary looking weapon, almost four feet long with the suppressor, and fitted with a large scope, it had been modified to break down into several pieces, each less than twenty-four inches long, for concealment.  As a bolt-action rifle, after each shot, the shooter would have to manually eject the spent cartridge and load the next by pulling back the bolt and pushing it forward.  The ammunition magazine carried five rounds.  It wasn’t known for firing quickly, but it was revered among snipers worldwide for its accuracy. 

“With your help, we can prevail and rid the country of the hatred we have seen festering for the last four years… the hatred emanating from the current occupant of the White house.”

Elevator Man lifted the rifle to the desk, back from the open window, grabbing two books to raise the bipod slightly.  He zoomed his scope in to view a small flag waving behind the man on the podium.  He made a minor adjustment to the scope.  He reframed his target and waited for his breathing to slow. 

There was no hatred.  He didn’t care who the target was.  His job was to eliminate him.  It was a job he’d done before.  Afghanistan, Iraq, Kurdistan, the Balkans, none of that mattered to him.  Only that he complete the mission.  It was not an easy shot, but certainly not the hardest he’d made 

When he was ready, and the timing was right, he gently squeezed the trigger with the pad of his index finger.  A little over a second later, twelve hundred meters away, the back of Barris’s head exploded in a cloud of blood and brain tissue from the .300 Winchester Magnum round entering just below his left eye. 

After taking just a moment to watch the bullet find its target, Elevator Man started breaking down his position.  He closed the window, replaced the books, collected his brass and packed away his rifle.  Moments later he exited the elevator on the ground floor, walking through the front door, past a pair of Capitol Police officers who rushed into the building well after he left.  He climbed into the van idling next to the curb and drove away. 

The job was out of his hands now.  If everyone else did what they were supposed to do, nobody would know that he had ever been there… and if they did manage to figure it out, it would be too late. 

Before Elevator Man had broken down his gun, the Secret Service detail had surrounded the body of the Senator, forming a protective barrier.  Each member of the team knew that it was too late, but they had to follow procedure.  Another group of agents, with help from the Capitol Police officers assigned to assist, removed the other people that had been on stage before Senator Barris, or that were slated to speak. 

The elevator service van was sitting at a traffic light when the ambulance and protective motorcade streamed by on the way to the George Washington University Hospital Emergency Room.  DC Police were already clearing an entrance for the presidential candidate. 

Senator Ted Barris was pronounced dead at fourteen minutes after ten in the morning.

She’d had enough of being alone… she didn’t even have a cat.  But then one of her friends had mentioned an app.  She tried it out but had spent a week sliding guys off the screen. She swore she would give the first guy that seemed halfway serious a shot. 

Bill had potential.  He was certainly good-looking.  Between his picture and his profile, she figured him to be a bit over six feet tall, and if the pictures were recent, he was trim and had a full head of close-cropped hair.  Clean shaven and tan, she thought he was physically her type. 

She assumed they would just meet for coffee, but he’d insisted on dinner and drinks.  And the restaurant he mentioned was one she’d been dying to try since they’d opened just a few weeks ago.  They were almost impossible to get into.  As soon as he mentioned it, she was onboard. 

She moved around her apartment, getting ready.  She had been thinking all day about what she would wear, wanting to look her best without making it look like she was trying too hard.  And if he was nearly as nice as he had been on the phone, it was shaping up to be a pretty good evening. 

She decided to wear her dark hair long, brushing over her shoulders.  She had a maroon mid-length dress she thought would be perfect… tight in the right places to accentuate her generous curves.  She wasn’t twenty anymore, but at thirty-two, she still attracted looks.  At five-six, she was slender, busty and had legs that she thought looked pretty good.  She sure had a lot of time and sweat invested in them. 

She slipped a pair of pumps with a four-inch heel onto her stocking clad feet.  Not that Bill would ever know that she was wearing thigh-high stockings, but in addition to being the perfect shade, they made her feel sexy.  She pulled on her jacket and headed downstairs to meet the Uber driver that was dropping her off at the bar just up the street from the restaurant. 

She stepped out of the backseat of the Lexus she had ordered up on Uber and walked across the sidewalk toward the front door of the trendy neighborhood bar.  As she reached out to grab the door, Bill stepped out to greet her and hold it for her. 

Wow, his pictures don’t do him justice, she thought to herself.  He was easily six-three, and she loved tall men.  And she could see the muscles rippling under the tight dress-shirt he was wearing.  She also noticed that his smile was very friendly.  He was going to have to work hard to turn this into a bad date. 

“Wow, Mary,” he said, “you look fantastic.  Your profile pictures looked good, but you look better in the flesh by a mile.”  He flashed her a million-dollar smile and she blushed. 

“You look pretty good yourself, Bill,” she replied. 

He led her to a small table by the window and pulled out her chair for her. 

“I ordered a nice blush for you,” he said casually, handing her a glass of wine as he slipped into the seat across from her. 

“Thank you, that’s perfect,” she said, taking a sip. 

They engaged in some small talk over the next thirty minutes.  She barely realized that she’d polished off three glasses of wine.  But when it was time to walk down the street to the restaurant, she realized she had a little more than a pleasant buzz.

As she stood, she wobbled a little before he steadied her and helped her with her jacket.  He firmly but gently took her arm and guided her through the small bar. 

“I hope you don’t think I’m a lush.  I normally don’t drink much; I can’t believe I had three glasses of wine.”

He flashed her that smile again, reassuring her that it was ok.  He even leaned over and pecked her cheek. 

As they walked through the front door, he put his arm around her, slipping his hand to her waist.  She was having more trouble balancing and was starting to think something might be wrong. 

“I don’t feel very good,” she whispered.  She was looking around to see if there might be a police officer around.  She tried to turn back toward the bar, thinking she might be able to get help, but his grip tightened.  “Please, let me go,” she said, her words slurring.  She was starting to panic on the inside, but the fog in her mind was getting thicker.  She wanted to run, but she couldn’t will herself to do anything.  She couldn’t have stood on her own if he had let her go. 

“It’ll be ok,” he said gently.  “I’ll help you and you won’t feel a thing.” 

A van pulled up next to them at the curb.  He turned her and, as the side door slid open, lifted her into the van.  He followed her in and closed the door as the van pulled away. 

As the van drove away, he reached into her purse and pulled out her phone.  He took her hand and used her finger to unlock it and went through to delete the app they had met on, as well as check to see if there were any other mentions of him.  He didn’t want there to be a trace of him in her digital wake.  Then he looked to see if her keys included the one to her office… it was there.